It seems as if large software companies have finally recognised the potential within emerging markets for their products. After Google's announcement of YouTube Go, which has been optimised for users in India and allows them to save videos for offline viewing, last month, now Shazam has launched a lite version of its app for emerging markets that allows users to identify music even when they are offline.
Shazam Lite has been launched in English for India, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Nigeria, while for Venezuela it is available in Spanish. The company has managed to substantially reduce the size of its main app to 1MB for the Lite version. Even though the app will not be as feature-rich as the standard version, it will provide the basic functionality of recognising music and saving recent results, which made Shazam popular in the first place.
The Lite version of the Shazam app is currently available only on Android.
"We're focused on providing Shazam in areas where connectivity is poor and available devices may be limited," Shazam's Head of Android Engineering Iordanis Giannakakis was quoted as saying the company's release.
As of now, the attempt to reach users beyond the connectivity issues in emerging markets seems like a win-win situation for both users as well as Shazam.
Shazam this week also launched its iMessage app, taking advantage of the opening of the iMessage platform to third-party apps. The app is available in the iMssage App Store, and lets users share their Shazam results via the messaging platform.
Recipients can expand the shared Shazam result to see larger artwork with title and artist, apart from seeing the Shazam count, a preview option, and Apple Music and iTunes buttons.
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